IAN SUTHERLAND tells the story of the Shieldhall industrial complex

between Govan and Renfrew, an enlightened and highly successful Scottish

experiment in manufacturing for the needs of the ordinary citizen.

GIVEN aspects of its ownership history, Shieldhall estate -- on the

banks of the Clyde, halfway between Govan and Renfrew -- was an

appropriate site for a radical enterprise. The original Shield Hall

itself, once a stately patrician mansion, complete with conservat-

ories, vineries, and extensive stables (from which the quality rode to

hounds), was the home of the Oswald family -- ex-Orcadian entrepreneurs

in the tobacco and wine trades. A scion, James Oswald, a

mid-nineteenth-century Glasgow MP, dabbled in Irish Republicanism and

vociferously opposed the slave trade.

William Maxwell was once also described as a man ''full of democratic

sentiments'' -- and he had appropriate plans for James Oswald's country

seat. Maxwell was a douce Edinburgh Protestant working man who might

have had his reservations about Irish Republicanism. But the elimination

of slavery -- in all its forms -- was a cause dear to his heart.

Described by an early co-operative writer as ''an ardent union man,''

William Maxwell, an activist in Edinburgh's burgeoning St Cuthbert's

Co-operative Society, was elected chairman of the Scottish Co-operative

Wholesale Society in 1881. Things were looking good for the SCWS,

founded only 13 years before. The Edinburgh democrat was taking the helm

of an even older tradition.

The weavers of Fenwick had practised co-operative trading (mostly in

oatmeal) as early as 1769. Govan's Victualling Society was founded in

1777. Bridgeton followed suit in 1800. The record suggests there were

more than 300 embryo co-operative societies by 1830. Robert Owen's

pioneering work at New Lanark was already a legend when Maxwell took

over the SCWS.

In 1864, in Glasgow's Bell Hotel, a conference was summond ''to

consider the necessity of establishing a wholesale depot or agency in

Glasgow for the purpose of supplying Co-operative societies in the West

of Scotland and elsewhere with pure groceries and provisions from the

best markets.'' Co-operators were much exercised by food adulteration

and subsequent meetings thundered against ''speculators in food.''

The rules of the new SCWS -- proclaiming co-operation's intention to

enter every trade except the liquor business -- were finally registered

in May 1868.

The Oswalds and Robert Owen's inheritors crossed paths long before

William Maxwell's shrewd eye fell on the family's 116 acres out past

Govan. In September 1868, the SCWS set up shop in the long-vanished

Madeira Court, off Argyle Street -- once the city residence of the

tobacco dynasty. Co-operation's teetotallers seem to have found no irony

in establishing their roots in a location named from the Oswald's

flourishing wine trade.

By 1873, ''intense interest'' was reported in the possibilities of

co-operative production north of the Border. Even the prospect of

co-operative shipbuilding was being investigated. Most of the

enterprises that did emerge -- like the ill-fated Glasgow co-operative

ironworks -- were responses to crisis (factory closedowns, lock-outs, or

strikes). They didn't last the course. The SCWS, avoiding the Demon

Drink and foaming at the mouth against food adulteration and real (or

imagined) retail and wholesale cartels, went marching on.

Even by 1878, the SCWS directorate had dabbled in semi-manufacture for

their clothing trade. They talked of founding a co-operative flour mill

and a sugar refinery. Their flourishing drapery department was

increasingly unhappy about the quality of items being received from

their private sector shirt manufacturer. SCWS buyer James Leggat -- an

ardent co-operator from boyhood -- is supposed to have turned to his

department head David Gardener and asked: ''Could we not make these

shirts ourselves?''

William Maxwell backed the idea immediately. The SCWS had started down

the road that would lead to Shield Hall becoming Shieldhall -- and the

site of one of Scotland's greatest industrial and social triumphs. James

Leggat's chance remark, born of frustration, effectively gave birth to

what Maxwell once termed ''this gigantic business.''

By 1882, the SCWS had entered the upholstery business. By 1884, they

had begun furniture manufacture. A boot department started up in the

SCWS's Wallace Street premises in 1885 -- destined to be one of the

''Co's'' enduring successes, producing #47,620 worth of proletarian

footwear in its first year. Hosiery production followed at Morrison

Street in 1886 -- millinery the following year. ''Co-operative Alley''

around Paisley Road was soon bursting at the seams. The search for

central premises was begun.

COMPLAINED LOUDLY

William Maxwell had been to the United States -- where they thought

big. He took in the lesson. When the Shield Hall estate came on the

market, he grabbed a large chunk of it -- at the (even then) high price

of #500 an acre. Maxwell paid up -- but complained loudly.

Co-operation's man of vision lived to regret an initial part-purchase of

the Oswald patrimony.

Maxwell's dream seems to have been a combination of Clydebank's Singer

works -- symbolising industrial might and efficiency -- with latter-day

Owenism. The new Shieldhall -- very much a suburb in 1887 when Maxwell

cut the first sod -- was to be a miniature garden city: works in the

centre, surrounded by model artisan housing. In the even, only the

industry actually arrived.

Building -- largely in the French Renaissance style -- proceeded

rapidly. By the summer of 1888, while the nation flocked to the Glasgow

International Exhibition, the Shieldhall complex was in full swing. At

the exhibition, early products of the Shieldhall furniture works were

receiving the first numerous public and professional plaudits. Maxwell

saw to it that Shieldhall's furniture makers were ''not harried and

harassed,'' as they painstakingly turned out their award-winning works.

Conventional private enterprise was accused, via abundant SCWS

propaganda, of offering for sale chairs stuffed with straw and old

newspapers. Then as now, cheap furniture could be lethal.

Private traders throughout Scotland reacted to the new Shieldhall and

its quality products. ''Committees for the Defence of Trade'' sprang up

-- issuing semi-paranoid propaganda, claiming the SCWS to be everything

from the agents of a foreign power to the recipients of secret subsidies

from God knows where. Much of it was undoubtedly desperate stuff -- and

in some instances, thoroughly libellous.

Maxwell had his cohorts retaliate by satirising their opponents --

secure in the knowledge that, as fast as Shieldhall turned high-quality

goods out, the canny Scots shopper, caring not one tuppeny damn whether

the SCWS and its Shieldhall cornucopia were covert revolutionaries or a

Judeo-Masonic plot -- snapped them up and pocketed the handsome

dividend.

Shieldhall's builders kept up an incessant barrage of statistics --

both silencing and further infuriating their enraged critics. In 1914,

Shieldhall turned out 2409 tables, 2162 kitchen tables, 670 bookcases,

596 hallstands, 757 chiffoniers, 1358 sets of drawers, 274 bedsteads,

751 wardrobes, 366 dressers, 7162 kitchen chairs, 3985 easy chairs, and

1180 dining-room suits. All of it was highly profitable -- and produced

by union labour earning union wages.

Printing began at Shieldhall in 1889. By 1903, the department had a

full staff of renowned commercial artists. The department was the first

in Scotland to use the rotary off-set lithograph machine.

PRODUCTION LINES

Kipling's footweary musical tribute to the Second Ashanti War might

have been specially written for Shieldhall. Boots, boots, and more boots

came off the production lines from 1888 onwards. By 1918, the SCWS had

sold more than 21!/;1/ million pairs of boots and shoes. The largest

footwear producer in Scotland, Shieldhall consumed 80,000 goatskins,

200,000 hides, and 300 tons of sole leather a year. From the original

shirt shop (and the SCWS was able to tell a 1912 parliamentary committee

on sweated trades that they paid an average of 25% higher wages than the

traditional ''putting out'' system of shirt-making), clothing production

grew to encompass artisan clothing, bespoke tailoring, off the peg

tailoring, underclothing, waterproofs, and hosiery.

The artisan clothing included serge jackets, moleskin trousers, and

what were exotically advertised as ''dongarees.'' Generations of kids

went to school in Shieldhall blazers. The police patrolled tenement

streets in Shieldhall blue. Fishermen from Berwick to Shetland put to

sea in legendary SCWS ''waterproof socks.''

Jam -- and lots of it -- was a Shieldhall staple from 1890. Co-op

activists, perhaps not entirely seriously, liked to claim that musical-

hall jokes about the co-operative jam empire having ''branches

everywhere'' were plants by the militant Trade Defence vigilantes.

Sweets followed in 1891, coffee essence in 1892, and pickles in 1893.

Shieldhall's fruit buyers were notoriously fussy. The news that the

man from Shieldhall had said ''yes'' must have brought a sigh of relief

from many a hard-pressed Blairgowrie berry farmer. Only Shieldhall's

vast fruit boilers could offer the consumer nine different types of

marmalade. In similar vein, ''Co'' sauce might not have boasted a label

in schoolboy French, but the parliamentary variety couldn't really get

across the Border until that fatal day when Scottish co-operation went

weak at the knees.

Scots greased their scalps with Shieldhall hair ''paraffin,'' soothed

their weans with Shieldhall baby powder, and brushed their teeth with

Shieldhall tooth talc. Shieldhall even made its own perfumes. The pomade

produced was of such quality as to be exported to the world's perfume

manufacturers.

Upwards of 8000 visitors came annually to tour the works. Nowhere in

the world were so many industrial processes carried on under one roof.

The chief guide, appropriately, was a Mr Cook.

Shieldhall produced everything from art silk stockings through cod

liver oil and garden sheds to -- on one glorious occasion -- 9000 pairs

of knickers for the Indian Army.

In both European wars, Shieldhall rose to the occasion. Although the

international co-operative movement valiantly struggled for peace before

1914 and 1939, there was no hesitation when the armies rolled. Even at

that, social responsibility was always to the fore.

When the master bakers of Glasgow tried to increase prices only a few

days before August 1914, they were thwarted by co-operative enterprise

-- upping bread production and maintaining original prices.

Shieldhall supplied boots to the French and Russian armies in the

Great War -- whether the latter had snow on them is not recorded. While

butchers openly sold horseflesh after 1914, the SCWS refused to do so.

Shieldhall cigarettes ''comforted'' the men in the trenches.

William Maxwell was knighted at Buckingham Palace in August 1919.

In the Second World War, when a German prisoner wrote home via the Red

Cross, the official postcard was printed at Shieldhall. If armies march

on both their boots and their stomachs, Shieldhall's output was a major

contribution to victory -- 607,500 pairs of boots were produced, along

with 3,024,000 tea tablets for use in commando raids and sundry

invasions. SCWS's green fruit and egg department were the official

suppliers of pigeon food to the RAF/War Department Pigeon Service. Wings

for Victory, indeed.

FURNITURE CRAFTSMEN

Shieldhall's furniture craftsmen made floats for river crossings,

Naafi chairs, and 50,000 bunks for Anderson shelters. When demob

arrived, thousands of Scots returned to civvy life in Shieldhall suits.

A little bit of Shieldhall actually went to war. In May, 1940, the

coaster Scottish Co-operator lifted hungry and weary men from the

beaches of Boulogne and Dunkirk, often under heavy shell-fire. She then

attempted to sail for St Valery, intent on rescuing the ill-fated 51st

Highland Division -- but was ordered to return to Spithead. Her crew

were discharged as suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Shieldhall was a working-class life-support system. Above all, its

founders were dedicated to Scotland. Its products used local labour,

local ingredients, and enhanced local technology. Throughout its heyday,

SCWS activists exhorted Scotland's myriad independent co-operative

societies to use exclusively the native products. To judge by the record

of repeated pleas and accusations, they were far from always successful.

Local societies were virtually obsessed with their commercial and

geographical independence. Private sector competitors made central

decisions and carried them through. In the 1920s, Scottish co-operation

had the chance to copy America again, and pioneer a new revolutionary

concept called self-service. The moment wasn't seized.

William Maxwell retired to Rothesay, where he took over the presidency

of the small local society. Had Shieldhall's founder lived to see the

ignominious collapse of Scottish co-operation in the 1970s, he would

have been broken-hearted.

But Shieldhall didn't totally pop its clogs. The Manchester-based CWS

retains a presence north of the border -- and promises expansion.

Co-operation was a response to crisis. In deprived areas, people are

banding together to form food co-ops, trading in basics. They may never

have heard of the Fenwick weavers, but they're treading the same road.

The CWS are actually offering shoppers at the shiny new supermarkets

the prospect of membership. Down south, one or two enterprising

societies have discovered a revolutionary new device to boost interest

and sales. It's called a dividend.